AMERICAN BOOK-PLATES
WHATEVER an American collects, he collects well: he works with a will
and energy that loosens his purse-strings in a manner which makes the
acquisition of valuable specimens a comparatively easy matter. It is
well, therefore, that book-plate collecting has found its way over the
Atlantic, and that there is now a goodly body of American book-plate
collectors who are giving the requisite amount of attention to American
examples, and who are not keeping to themselves the result of their
labours. In the first edition of this book I wrote: 'No doubt, ten years
hence, we shall know a great deal more about American book-plates'; and
already the appearance of Mr. Charles Dexter Allen's[11] interesting and
carefully composed account of them has enabled me materially to improve
this chapter, which I have devoted to them.
The majority of book-plates which bear upon them American addresses,
especially those belonging to the Southern States, many of which appear
with the opening of the eighteenth century, are, without doubt, the work
of engravers in the then mother-country.[12] The library owners of
Virginia sent to England for these book-plates, or their sons ordered
them there, whilst paying the orthodox visit to one of the universities,
and brought them home, either for their own use or for the use of their
fathers. The northern book-plates, though much later, are mostly the
work of artists born and bred, or at least settled, in America.
Foremost in interest and earliest in date of these American
address-plates is that of William Penn, on which he styles himself
'Proprietor of Pensylvania.' This is designed in the ordinary 'Simple
Armorial' style then common in England, and is dated in 1702. It is
therefore subsequent to Penn's last visit to his 'plantation,' and
cannot have been the work of an engraver on that side of the Atlantic.
After his death, the inscription on this book-plate was altered, for his
son's use, to 'Thomas Penn of Stoke Pogeis, in the county of Bucks,
first proprietor of Pensilvania (_sic_).' The expression 'first' must
here be evidently read as 'chief' or 'principal.' The fact of this
alteration is important for collectors to note, as copies of William
Penn's book-plate are frequently offered for sale, which--they are
palpably recent impressions--are said to be struck from the original
plate; a statement which, from the fact mentioned, may be at once
discredited.[13]
Next in point of date is a much more ornate book-plate, the inscription
on which reads: 'William Byrd of Westover, in Virginia, Esquire.' It is
an elaborate piece of work, excellently engraved in the style of the
majority of English book-plates of 1720 or thereabouts, 'Simple
Armorial,' but with indications of Jacobean decoration. William Byrd was
born in Virginia, 28th March 1694; he was sent to England to be
educated, and returned to his native country, having his mind 'stored
with useful information to adorn its annals, his manners cultivated in
royal Courts,' and with this book-plate, as a mark of his devotion to
literature.
The famous Westover mansion, which may to-day be viewed from the James
River, two hours' sail below Richmond, was for long the viceregal Court
of Virginia. It was erected about the year 1678, by William Byrd, who
left England when very young, and was father to his namesake, whose
book-plate has just been described, the author of the famous _Westover
Manuscripts_, compiled in 1732-33.
Some five years before the probable date of the Byrd book-plate, we have
note of that belonging to 'Robert Elliston, gent., Comptrol^{r} of His
Majestie's Customs of New York in America MDCCXXV.' This book-plate is
quite 'Jacobean' in style, and was no doubt executed in England, and
sent out to the colony. It is too fine a piece of work to be the
production of any colonial engraver of that date.
But the interest attaching to book-plates bearing upon them American
addresses, and used by residents in America, is obviously not so great
as that awakened by examples which were also actually produced in
America,--examples which at once give us an insight into the state of
the engraver's art, and of the artistic feeling then existing there.
The earliest of these is the book-plate of the 'Rev. John Williams,'
first minister of Deerfield, Mass., dated in 1679. The next, in 1704,
that of Thomas Prince, an American born and bred, who graduated from
Harvard College in 1707, and paid his first visit to England in 1709, so
that his book-plate may be taken as genuinely American. In design it
resembles dozens of English examples,--a rough woodcut border of
national emblems, within which is the inscription, 'Thomæ Prince Liber,
Anno Domini, 1704'; the sequence of the words in the inscription, the
reader will notice, being somewhat unusual. The Prince Library was
bequeathed to a Society, which became known as 'the New England
Library,' and which itself had a similar label prepared recording the
gift. A part of the collection is now in the Boston Public Library.
But these two examples stand by themselves; it is not until the middle
of the eighteenth century that any number of book-plates of American
execution are found; after that, there are a really considerable
quantity. Their style is not particularly distinctive; it is at first
either Jacobean or 'Chippendale,' or a combination of the two styles;
later, the 'wreath and ribbon,' and landscape and pictorial styles are
introduced and treated much as in England. In execution, American
book-plates are perhaps a trifle coarse. The more prominent of their
engravers seem to have been--Hurd, Dawkins, Anderson, Johnson,
Callendar, Doolittle, the Mavericks, Revere, and Turner. Revere is the
best known; he was a picture engraver of some merit; but for the most
part the names quoted are those of men of little artistic reputation.
Nathaniel Hurd was probably the earliest of these engravers, and not the
worst. He was born at Boston in 1729, the son of an American, who was a
goldsmith in that town. Nathaniel was his father's apprentice; he
devoted himself to working on copper, and so naturally would turn his
attention to book-plates. Probably the earliest example, signed by him
as 'N. H.,' and dated in 1749, was designed for Thomas Dering. This is
the earliest signed and dated American book-plate yet brought to light;
Hurd was barely twenty when he produced it. As a seal and book-plate
engraver he worked hard and well; he died in 1777. One of his most
original book-plates is that of Harvard College. A curiously short and
wide shield, bearing the college arms, is encircled by a band bearing
the inscription, 'Sigill. Coll. Harvard. Cantab. Nov. Angl. 1650.'
Outside this circle are two leaf sprays, tied at the base and nearly
meeting at the top. Both in conception and execution this is a very
peculiar book-plate. The Dering plate, on the other hand, is interesting
as showing how exactly the style of the mother-country at that period
was copied in America. Here we have a pure 'Chippendale' book-plate of
an unpronounced type.
Henry Dawkins (who began life by designing metal buttons) had been for a
long time resident in America, when, in 1754, he engraved the book-plate
of 'John Burnet of New York.' Like the Dering plate, Burnet's is
interesting, and for the same reason; it is 'Chippendale,' but
distinctly _later_ Chippendale, with cupids and other figures
introduced. Dawkins was found guilty of counterfeiting, and begged to be
hanged rather than suffer the imprisonment to which he had been
condemned. Whether or not his request was granted we do not know.
That the heraldry on some of these American book-plates should be
startling, is only to be expected. Take, for instance, the very
interesting book-plate of Robert Dinwiddie, Deputy-Governor of Virginia
from 1751-58, which was probably engraved a few years before the earlier
date. Here we have the shield divided fesse-fashion, and in the upper
and lower divisions landscapes,--the first introducing an Indian archer
shooting at a stag, and the lower a fort or castle with a ship at sea
sailing towards it. Dinwiddie was a good servant to the English Crown
both in Barbadoes and Virginia, and is said, like most successful people
of his day, to be descended from an ancient family, though his immediate
ancestors were Glasgow merchants. We are, however, not asked to believe,
and we should not, if we were, that the arms are more ancient than
Governor Dinwiddie himself, or that they _originated_ elsewhere than in
his mercantile brain, though they may have been legally _granted_ by the
Scotch College of Arms. The plate looks 'Scotch'--it is 'Chippendale,'
and, I suspect, was engraved in the mother-country by a Scotch engraver.
We may date it about 1750.
There are, of course, some American book-plates specially interesting
from their possessors, and foremost amongst them is that of George
Washington. For its description I cannot do better than quote Mr. Allen:
'The arms are displayed upon a shield of the usual shell-like form, and
the sprays and rose-branches of this style [Chippendale] are used in the
ornamentation of the sides of the escutcheon. The motto, _Exitus acta
probat_, is given upon its ribbon at the base of the shield, and the
name is engraved, in script, on the bracket at the bottom of the design.
In general appearance the plate is like scores of Chippendale plates of
the period.' I am sorry to take, somewhat, from the interest which
attaches to this book-plate, by saying that, as I look more closely into
it and study the details of its ornamentation and its execution, I am
convinced it was engraved in England and not in America; it must
therefore be of an earlier date than that attributed to it. I do not
think it is subsequent to 1760. Of course there is a forgery of this
plate, though it was prepared, not because of the value of the
book-plate, but to sell a number of books which were said to have
belonged to George Washington himself, and to have been captured in
Virginia. The fraud was, however, discovered. No doubt these forgeries
are now palmed off as the great man's book-plate. Mr. Lichtenstein's
words about the real book-plate and the sham are therefore important:--
'Original examples are noticeable for their sharp black impressions on
dampened plate paper of a buff colour mellowed by age. Those of the
imitation are printed from a plate which has the appearance of having
seen considerable wear; besides being printed on a dry paper of a thin
quality, and a bluish colour; by its modern appearance it is easily
recognised, the engraving of the name being poorly done.'
I do not know if a series of 'Presidents'' book-plates could be shown to
exist, but Washington's successor, John Adams, certainly used one,
introducing into it a certain number of national emblems. The American
eagle with outspread wings overshadows the whole design.
Of American women, in the early days of independence, only one is known
to have used a book-plate. This lady was Elizabeth Græme, the youngest
child of Dr. Thomas Græme, member of the Provincial Council, and in
other ways a distinguished and wealthy citizen, who owned Græme Park, an
estate lying some twenty miles from Philadelphia. Elizabeth was born in
1737. At seventeen she was engaged to be married, but her engagement was
suddenly--why, we learn not--broken off. To divert her mind, she set to
work to translate _Télémaque_. She carried out the task, but it was
never published, and lies to-day, as she wrote it, in the Philadelphia
Museum. Her next engagement was to a man ten years her junior--a Mr.
Ferguson; him she married, but, her husband taking the Crown's part,
they separated. By the time of her death, in 1801, she had grown needy,
despite the fact that she received money from her literary productions,
which were numerous. Though evidently a staunch Republican, she was the
bearer of the famous letter from the Rev. Jacob Duché to Washington, in
which the writer begged his correspondent to return 'to his allegiance
to the King.' The book-plate, which is, in every way, curious and
interesting, is Armorial.
An interesting point about American book-plates--which illustrates a
distinctive feature in social life there--is the existence of a large
number belonging to Friendly Societies, Mutual Improvement Societies,
and institutions akin to them; for the books forming the libraries of
these bodies contain some of the most curious and characteristic
American book-plates. Amongst the number may be mentioned those of the
New York Society Library, the Farmington Library, the Hasty Pudding
Society and the Porcellian Club in Harvard College, the Linonian Society
and the Brothers of Unity in Yale, and the Social Friends in Dartmouth
College.
None of these are particularly early, indeed the majority must be dated
after the establishment of independence, but they are well worthy of
study. Allegory runs wild in the book-plates--there are three mentioned
by Mr. Dexter Allen--of the first-named Society, and Minerva is
prominent in all. Let me endeavour to describe two, both the work of
Maverick. In one she hands a volume of the Society's Library to an
Indian, whose attitude in receiving it suggests that he had never seen a
book before; in which case its contents cannot have done him much good.
In the other she has just descended from Olympus, entered the library,
and seized a volume from the book-shelf, which she presents to an
apparently more appreciative red-skin. I say appreciative, for in return
he hands the goddess his tomahawk. Minerva with a tomahawk! Can anything
be more delightfully absurd?
One might go on with many pages of these descriptions, but enough has
been said to show the burlesque spirit in which allegory is treated,
doubtless quite unintentionally, on American Society book-plates. In
that fact lies much of their interest. More happy in conception and
execution is the homelier design appearing on the book-plate of the
Village Library in Farmington, which, if not a beautiful piece of
engraving, is at least free from grotesqueness.
'In this,' says Mr. Allen, 'we see the interior of a room in which a
young lady patron of the library is storing her mind with those choice
axioms which, if put in practice, far exceed the attractiveness of mere
personal beauty; so says the couplet beneath the picture:--
'Beauties in vain, their pretty eyes may roll;
Charms strike the sense, but merit wins the soul.
A writer in the _Ex Libris Journal_ points out that, after the
Revolution, till about the year 1810, there were scarcely any American
armorial book-plates. Perhaps one of the earliest is that of 'Samuel
Elam, Rhode Island,' which appears to have been engraved about 1800. It
is 'Pictorial' in style, and shows a shield, bearing arms, resting
against a tree-stump, with a landscape background. The majority of
American book-plate possessors, from 1810 until the fashion of using a
book-plate became common some little time back, seem to have been
members of the legal profession.
During the last few years many American book-plates have been as wild
and meaningless in design as the majority of those recently produced in
England; although, as Mr. Allen's illustrations show us, a few truly
artistic and appropriate examples have appeared. One modern book-plate
from across the Atlantic is sure to attract English eyes; for the
owner's works are read as eagerly, and appreciated as fully, here as in
the States,--I mean that of 'Oliver Wendell Holmes.' This, too, is
appropriate for the man, consisting simply of a motto-scroll, on which
is written _Per Ampliora ad Altiora_, and a nautilus--'the ship of
pearl,' as he calls it; 'the venturous bark that flings
'On the sweet summer winds its purpled wings
In gulfs enchanted where the siren sings,
And coral reefs lie bare,
Where the cold sea maids rise to sun their streaming hair.'
FOOTNOTES:
[11] _American Book-Plates._ By Charles Dexter Allen. Bell and Son,
1895.
[12] The same remark applies to other book-plates bearing colonial
addresses, such as that of 'Isaac Royall, Esq., of Antigua.'
[13] It may be remarked as curious that William Penn does not, on his
book-plate, impale the arms of Hannah Callowhill, to whom he was married
in 1695.